I purchased this Persian miniature in the bazaar of Esfahan, in the workshop of an old master of miniature painting. The image represents Sheherezade who originally most probably held a wine cup in her hand, but for the sake of Gyuri let us regard it as a cup of tea.

The image is beautiful and it follows the best traditions of Persian miniature painting. But the inscription above and on the reverse of it is not any less interesting, being more than a hundred years older than the picture itself. In fact, the master usually paints his works on the leaves of the discarded old workbooks of the local school of theology, by this not only increasing the “archaic” atmosphere of the image, but often enriching its meaning as well.

On the two sides of this leaf the one-time talib or student of theology wrote a prayer in Arabic with black ink and in careful hand, and then he also scrawled between the black lines, with red ink and in hasty handwriting, the meaning of the phrases in Persian. I leave for the Semitic philological wisdom of Gyuri to decipher the Arabic verses, and it is only the Persian text of which now I give a concise translation, and later a Persian and Latin transcription as well.

My ears and my tongue remember You. In my heart I keep the memory of Your love and care. I confess that I did wrong, and I humbly ask You for mercy. For You look at me with love, and I bow in front of You, and strive after worshiping You. I recommend myself into Your mercy, indulgence and benignity. Oh my God, look at me, for You know my affliction. Protect me from the devil, from the wickedness of the world, from all evil things and from any long-enduring ordeal.

The master was away, and his son told me that at this time he regularly teaches the art of traditional miniature painting at the local school of art. I requested him to ask his father when he comes back to attach some lines of recommendation to the miniature that I purchased as a gift. The master did so indeed, signing his good wishes with a sketchy self-portrait instead of a signature:

For George with affection and remembrance on his fortieth birthday. [In the year of the Hijra] 1386, the 6th day of the month of Aban.

The Trans-Asia Express leaves from Istanbul to Tehran once a week, on Wednesday night, five minutes to eleven from the Haydarpaşa station. According to its schedule published in the site of the Turkish State Railways it arrives early in the morning to Ankara, then passes through the Anatolian Plateau, and in the third day about noon it arrives to Lake Van in Eastern Turkey. Here the passengers take a ferryboat that cuts across the hundred kilometers between the harbors of Tatvan and Van in seven hours, during which they can also admire a beautiful sunset above the lake encircled by the belt of the majestic Anatolian mountains. On the other side they are attended by the Persian train that in the night passes through the Iranian border, in the early morning stops in Tabriz, and arrives to Tehran in the evening of the fourth day. The ticket for the two thousand kilometers long journey costs 50 euros, sleeper and ferry included.

The track can be well seen on the map of the Turkish railway system fixed on the top of the television in the Istanbul railway restaurant. Starting from point 1 and traveling through line 2, after point 4 (Sivas) we change for the Kurdish siding-line that takes us to Lake Van at the right side of the map and after the lake passes us over to the Persian State Railways.

Whoever is willing to dedicate these 66 hours (according the official schedule, but in reality rather 80 hours) to the railways in the interest of a slow, gradual arrival to Persia instead of the 40 hours of bus travel or the few hours of an air flight, can read further information on the Iranian page of seat61.com. The author among other things informs us that we can also secure a ticket in advance for 59 euro in some Istanbul travel agencies, and he sincerely confesses that “seat61 gets a small commission” if we mention who directed us to them.

We were not so farsighted. There were so many things to organize, papers to settle, works to close before leaving that there was no time left for booking the tickets. We thought that being pretty much beyond the tourist season, there will be plenty of empty seats in the train, and it will be enough to buy the tickets in Istanbul.

In Istanbul, however, nobody knows where the tickets are sold for this train about which no living person has ever heard. Such trains are only taken by old English gentlemen in search of the scenes of their youth, Polish itinerant vendors and adventuresome backpackers, but never by Turkish people. In our hotel, the cheap and cosy Sultan’s Inn (at the lower border of the map, in the Sultanahmet district) of which I will also speak more amply later, the young receptionist desperately called the travel agencies known to him, but he only could have secured a ticket to Tatvan, the railhead of the Turkish line. As to how we will make the other thousand kilometers from there – “inshallah” he threw up his hands, it is already the domain of the Shi'ite Allah, not of the Sunni one.

The international booking office of the Haydarpaşa station on the other, Asian shore of the Sea of Marmara is already closed in the evening. Thus we set out in the Istanbul dusk, questioning travel agencies in the street of the Blue Mosque, until in the Backpackers office we are given the tip to go to the Sirkeci station, the terminus of the European railway lines (at the upper edge of the map), where tickets are sold even at this late hour, and yes, for Asian lines as well.

We amble along in the drizzling evening on Babiali Caddesi, the north-southern crossing road to the railway station. In the glass-fronted ticket office a girl is speaking by phone and an older gentleman is having a supper from a half-opened drawer. We pick out the girl so that we would not disturb the gentleman, but then it appears that we should have done just the opposite, as he turns out to be the international ticket office. He serves us with a proportionate annoyance, as if he regarded it as a personal offense that we want to travel to such an impossible place. He distributes the basic informations in an offhand manner, it appears on him that he does not believe we seriously want to buy and that he would prefer to return to his drawer. In the meantime a Turkish gentleman forges ahead asking a ticket to some unknown destination. He is regarded as a serious customer, and the two men devotedly negotiate the possible alternatives. The serious customer pays in dollars.

A large number of folders stand in huge piles all over the desks. The gentleman rummages among them until he finds one that has to do with our train. Yes, they have ticket, namely one single empty sleeping compartment in all the train, all the other seats have been sold. This one was waiting for us! While we are pondering whether we should go back to the city to withdraw cash, he sits back behind his drawer so that time would not flow in vain. But then I risk the question whether we can pay with bank card. To our great surprise we can. From another drawer he fishes out a card reader, wipes the dust off it, and while he swallows the last bites, he withdraws from our card the 182 Turkish lira equivalent to 100 euro. In the meantime two Korean girls inquire me in broken Turkish about the time of departure of the train to Thessaloniki.

After the successful purchase we walk out to the nearby Eminönü coastline to learn from where the ferry departs tomorrow to the Haydarpaşa station. The row of landing-places and ticket offices rallying along the coast gives a familiar impression, as it is just like the good old jampacked metro terminus of Kőbánya-Kispest in Budapest, albeit much bigger and much more interesting. At the boarding places a large crowd flows out and in to the ships, along the entrances a large number of kiosks sell kebab and tea, and the spaces between the kiosks are filled up by a continuous street market where one can find everything from fresh grape to sheepskin waistcoat and Chinese shoes. But the most exciting feature are the small boats hauled alongside the quay between the big ferries on which, in the middle of the swell of the sea so that it is a seasickness just to look at it, three or four men fry small fishes by the dozens. Their agent standing on the quay advertises the stuff in a loud voice, routinely taking over from the boat the fried fish put in a fresh bread between green leaves with one hand and the three lira for it with the other. Along the boats there are some plastic stools with lemon juice and salt on them and with small seats around them. We plant ourselves to a free place, enjoying the magnificent dinner, watching the swarming crowd, the departing ferries, and the glimmer of the lights of the city on the dark water of the Golden Horn Bay.

On the following evening, after a whole day spent by walking and completely filled with the colors and vivacity of the city, here we wait for the ferry to take us over to the Asian shore. The last ferry leaves at 7:10 to the Haypdarpaşa pier. After this time there are only ferries to the much more southward Kadiköy from where it takes twenty minutes to walk up to the station, and with the crammed backpack I have no desire to do so. On the way to the ferry we did our shopping for the three days travel in the small supermarket near to the haven. The salesman watched me with mistrust as I was tottering with the enormous sack on my back between the gondolas and giving instructions in an unknown language to my accomplice. In order to ease the tension I want to ask him where I can find goat cheese, but the name of the goat does not come to my mind, although in Turkish it is almost the same as in Hungarian: kechi. Therefore I’m maaing instead. His face relaxes into a smile, shakes his head, points on a large tray of beautiful white cheese and he’s baaing for a long time. We have found the common language. The ice is broken.

The transcontinental voyage lasts for a quarter of an hour and it costs 1.30 lira (about 80 eurocents). We go up on the shipboard and from there we are watching the withdrawing ligths of the City crowned by the illuminated Suleiman Mosque. At our side two schoolgirls are chatting, and from time to time casting a furtive look at us, trying to identify our language. Finally, when nearing to the pier, one of them summons up her courage and “Was für eine Sprache sprechen Sie? Deutsch?” she puts the absurd question, for if she knows German this much then she should clearly hear that we are not speaking in German. We are speaking in Hungarian, I tell her in Turkish. They greet us with a laugh, and later when turning back in the pier I see that they are waving their hands to us. I wave my hands back to them.

The Arabic inscription gives a strange impression on the tile-covered Jugendstil facade of the Haydarpaşa station reminding of a German knight’s castle. In fact, this building of the atmosphere of the Monarchy is also a strange feature here, in the East. The city received it in 1908 as a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm, a central station of the Berlin-Istanbul-Baghdad railway built by the Germans which already arrived as far as Urfa when the English, shocked by the German expansion, unleashed the first World War. The railway that could have brought the European civilization as far as the Persian and Syrian borders, has never been completed. Many decades later a junction line was opened towards Baghdad from Gaziantep on the Kurdish rail spur, on which since 2003, when the Americans brought their own civilization to Iraq, the traffic is suspended.

The railway restaurant where we plant ourselves for the three-four hours remaining until departure could also be at any station of the Monarchy. Stucco-decorated high ceiling, long white curtains, carefully laid white tables, framed prints on the walls painted with oil, a Baroque style barman’s counter, waiters in black suit, and beer, much beer. We carefully choose our place by the side of the back door that directly opens to the sea, and when we manage to imperceptibly open it, fresh sea air streams in. Such thing cannot be found in the Monarchy.

We point at some appetizing vegetable plates on the counter of which we do not even know the name. Fried eggplant, thick soup, salad, hot sauce, muskmelon. The dinner is majestic. We eat slowly, asking for new plates, “the one they are having at the other table” and, inspired by the genius loci, we order beer, the very first time in Istanbul.

Turkish beer for the collection of John

Around nine in the evening the audience slowly begins to get thicker, already all the tables are full. They also switch on the bigger TV under the railway map, and they direct a projector on the large empty wall in the field of sight of the white lion. By this time already everyone is watching the TVs. The transmission that thus far continuously broadcasted the images of the collision between the Turkish army and the Kurds on the Iraqi border now changes for sport advertisements, and we realize that soon they will televise a football match.

At about a quarter before ten the Beşiktaş-Liverpool European Champions League match begins. The audience follows it with a tense attention, continuously commenting the developments, and, in contrast to Hungarians, following the actions not with shouting but with sober strategic footnotes. More and more people are arriving, the seats at the tables are pushed together, rakis are ordered with the new beers. Just then I discover what the white lion is keeping in his hands: a soccer ball.

The Turks are playing beautifully. “Ten minutes later we have to go to the train, until then we could get a nice goal after the good dinner, really,” I say. Some minutes later, in the thirteenth minute of the match, the English receive their first goal, and the Beşiktaş fans, as we read later, produce a world record of football’s loudest ever level with 132 decibels. Now we can go.

Trio Tzane: Bir evler yaptırdım (A house I’ve built). From the CD Gaïtani (2010)The three members of Trio Tzane represent the three – Greek, Bulgarian and Turkish – branches of traditional Balkan music, and on this album they select songs from all three traditions in three voices, in their own arrangement. A house I’ve built is a Turkish wedding song of Slavic roots from Prizren of Southern Kosovo, but its lyrics is about the lovers who are forbidden to see each other.

Soheil Nafisi: همه فصلن دنیا Hame-ye faslân-e donyâ, “All seasons of the world”. From the CD تران های جنوب Tarânehâ-ye jonūb, “Southern songs” (2010)“I wish every season of the world were springtime…” The text of this song was written by Ebrahim Monsefi (1945-1997), the popular Persian “bard” of the 60-70’s in the Hormozgani dialect of the Southern Persian port city of Bandar Abbas, and he accompanied it with guitar on his only published album ترانه های رامی Tarânehâ-ye Râmi, “Songs of Râmi”. Here it is sung by Soheil Nafisi on his recently published CD, to which he gave the title of “Southern songs” as a hommage to Monsefi, and even the style of the music is inspired by the port city’s Arabish music, a far away relative of Spanish Flamenco. This song accompanied our post on the old bicycles of Isfahan.

Deniz Kızı Eftelya: Kadıköy’lü. From the CD Kadıköy’lü (1998)Born in a Greek family in Istanbul, Deniz Kızı (“Mermaid”) Eftelya (1891-1939), was a legendary singer of early 20th-century Istanbul. This CD by Kalan Music is a good selection of her early recordings. To the post on the Ottoman ephemera of Istanbul.

Lila Downs: El relámpago (The lightning). From the CD El cantina (2006)On this CD the American - Mexican Mixtec Indian singer performs Mexican songs. This one accompanies our post on the early 20th-c. Mexican photos of the Casasola brothers. Lila Downs won a worldwide fame with the music of the film on Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera’s wife, who also figures on the photos of the Casasolas.

Facundo Cabral: The day that I go, and Carlos Di Fulvio (*1939): The chacarera. Music and song by Sebastiano Solis. From the CD El Gaucho, el Inca y la Nueva Música (1982).The Argentine poet Facundo Cabral (*1937) grew up in an asylum. “I did not speak until I was nine years old, I was illiterate until the age of fourteen, at forty-six I first met my father. After escaping the asylum, I learned singing from peasants. On 24 February 1954 a tramp recited to me the Sermon on the Mount, and I discovered that I was reborn. Then I wrote the lullaby Vuele bajo. This is how it all started.” – The text and translation of the two songs can be read here.

Federico Lechner, Tango & Jazz Trio: Beboponga (2008) (5'06")Recently we have expanded our jazz collection with three samples of Argentine jazz which seems particularly productive lately. To the CDs of Ernesto Jodos (El jardín seco, 2008) and Paula Shocron (Homenaje, 2009) found in Buenos Aires, is now added the album of the Federico Lechner Tango & Jazz Trio entitled Beboponga (2008). All the three discs are led by pianists, and on this one, Beboponga also feature Andrés Litwin (drums), Javier Moreno, Jorge Cerrato “Jato” and Pablo Martín Caminero (bass) as well as Gladston Galliza singing in track 10 (entitled “A mi madre”). In the first and last tracks Antonio Serrano whistles and plays the harmonica. Most of the compositions are by Lechner, but there are some versions of other musicians as well. The most striking is the one titled “Spike” on a Fantasy Impromptu by Frederic Chopin. The track quoted here is the first one of the disk which gives its title.

Masoud Bakhtyari (Bahman Alaeddin): Tey tum rah تی توم ره /Râh-e bârik راه باریک (Lane) (4'13"). From the CD Bahang بهنگ /Arus عروس (Bride) (2007).The music of the Bakhtiari nomads in central Zagros, hence the bilingual, Bakhtiari and Persian titles. The lyrics are the poems of Ali Hafezi. Bahman Alaeddin begins his bilingual – Persian-Bakhtiari – blog with the presentation of this album, and also Delnavazha writes about it. Pulsating, repetitive melodies, like the ones sung by the friends of the bride while waiting for the bridegroom. Like the Sephardic Ya salió de la mar la galana was here below.

Photis Ionatos: Ithaca, on the poem Ιθάκη by Konstantinos N. Kavafis; and Verses, on the poem Στροφές by Kostas Karyotakis. From the CD Ithaque (1988).Photis Ionatos in this CD set to music the poems of great 20th-century Greek poets. The Greek music is pervaded by the atmosphere of French chansons, which is no wonder, as Ionatos has lived in Belgium since the age of eighteen. This CD was one of our first, definitive encounters with true Greek music and modern Greek poetry. There was a time when we took very seriously this poem by Kavafis: as a memento, I have also woven it into a tale. Today the Verses already stay nearer to me. I will also translate them.

Savina Yannatou: Ya salió de la mar la galana (The lady has come out of the sea), El sueño de la hija del rey (The dream of the princess) and Los bilbilicos (The nightingales). Three songs from the CD Άνοιξη στη Σαλονίκη (Spring in Saloniki, 1995).Savina Yannatou in her more than twenty CDs sings the traditional songs of the whole Mediterranean and even more distant lands (in one of them for example a Moldovan Hungarian – „Csángó” – song, in Hungarian). This first CD of her, presenting the results of an ethnomusicological research in Thessaloniki, was completely dedicated to the music of the once numerous and rich Sephardic population of Saloniki. We have quoted of it in three posts, also giving an English translation of their Sephardic (Ladino) text: here,here and here.

Azerbaijan Folk Ensemble: Bayati Shiraz (7'05") and Balkan Messengers, Çeçen kızı (Chechen girl) from the CD “Balkan Messengers 2”The beautiful first piece could be also a traditional Hungarian violin solo from Transylvania, but it had been made more refined by the influence of the Persian culture to which also its title alludes. (Azerbaijan was from ancient times to 1833 a province of Persia, and its part laying to the south of the Caucasus still belongs to Iran.) We have included this on the blog margin as an illustration to our post written on Tanburi Cemil Bey’s song “The Chechen girl”, with the “Caucasian beauties” in mind. The above piece of the Balkan Messengers is the most beautiful version of this latter, but you are suggested to listen to the other versions as well in the same post.

Mohammad Reza Lotfi: Âvâz-e Bayât-e Esfahân (27'58"), tar; tonbak accompaniment by Nâsser Farhangfar, from the CD Parvâz-e Esgh (The flight of love); and Raghs-e Parandegân (The dance of birds) (7'07") tar solo from the CD Ramz-e Esgh (The mysteries of love).I wanted to continue the bird thread, this is why I have chosen exactly The dance of birds by Lotfi, the great old man of Persian music who has long since been living and teaching in Los Angeles and only rarely goes home to give a concert which at these times becomes a national feast, like in this May in Tehran at which I was unable to attend, my heart was broken. Unfortunately, exactly this dance of the birds is only a low quality pirate registration of a Copenhagen concert, this is why you have to listen first to the improvisation in Isfahan mode, so that you could imagine its forcefulness also in the birds piece. Lotfi’s style is markedly different from that of Alizadeh, within the same traditional Persian lute music. And then you have not yet heard the other Persian lute players whose pieces I’m about to publish here for new knots.

Hossein Alizadeh: Horizon, setar solo; and Birds, on which Homa Niknam sings.Here you are some more of Hossein Alizadeh, the first and second piece from the CD Birds (پرنده ها), recorded in 2006 together with Madjid Khaladj (Iranian drums: tombak, dayre, daf) and with Homa Niknam (voice). The apropos of its inclusion was this post with birds. You should listen to the two pieces one after the other, without interruption, as they also play it on the CD.

Taberna Mylaensis: Fammi ristari ‘nto menzu di to braccia (4'10")The Taberna Mylaensis („Tavern of Milazzo”) has been researching and singing Sicilian folk music since 1975. In Italy they have become a legend, the synonym of Sicily. This beautiful love song, Let me rest in your arms is from their first disk of 1976. I will soon publish its original text together with its translation.

Soheil Nafisi: شهاب‌ها و شب‌ها – Shahâbhâ va shabhâ – Comets and nightsOf this song, the poem of one of the greatest modern Persian poets Mehdi Akhavan Sales (1928-1991) I have no mp3 version. You can only see and hear it in a video version here, where I also give an English translation and add some commentary on the subtleties of Persian poetry.

Dusán and Zorán Sztevanovity: There was a dance (from the CD Az élet dolgai, 1991) (5'46")In the first post of our thread opened with the title “History sung” we included some songs by the Zorán Sztevanovity from the Hungary of the 70s and 80s, you are suggested to go over there and listen to all of them. The source of this There was a dance, the Take this waltz by Leonard Cohen and its flamenco version by Enrique Moreno have been presented here.

Wang Wei: 陽關三疊 Three variations of the Yang Pass - Wu Wenguang, guqin solo (5'35")This famous song composed by Wang Wei – whose volume of poems from the times of the Tang Dynasty gave name to our blog – as a farewell poem to his friend Yuan Er leaving for a mission to the Western barbarians over the Yang Pass, was worked up several times, and it became a distinguished piece of the repertoire of guqin, the Chinese zither. The “three variations” refers to the fact that it was traditionally repeated in three different versions. We have recently published its text with translation and with some comments.
The Yang Pass border station stood only 70 kilometers from Dunhuang. Aurel Stein, when a thousand and five hundred years later arrived here from the West, explored the sand-buried settlements of those very barbarians visited by Yuan Er on his mission.

Kulin ban: Žali Zare da žalimo (Cry, Sara, cry for me), 2006 (2'08")
and N. Constantinopoulos: Εβράδυν παληοβράδυν κι ο ώλιος έδυσε (Evening, evil evening, the sun set down) (4'02")The first one is a Serbian folk song from the Turkish period, in a beautiful a capella version. Here I also include its video clip and English translation, with the second song of the medieval Greek border guards as a footnote, and with a historical note on the Balkans where we live.

Bach: The Art of the Fugue, Contrapunctus 1 - Fretwork (3'09")I have been trying to find a a good chamber music version of the Art of the Fugue. It is not easy at all. This piece – just like the Musical Offer – is usually performed either too mechanically, or too sentimentally. The Fretwork on this a CD managed to remain in the middle, in a very elegant way. Now I only need a similarly fine chamber version of the Musical Offer.

Klezmatics: Shnirele perele (6'11") (from the CD Rhythm & Jews) and Woody Guthrie: Come When I Call You (4'25") (from the CD Wonder Wheel)I like very much the Klezmatics. The text of the first song can be read here (in Yiddish original and with an English translation), while that of the other here, both with some commentary.

Hossein Alizadeh - Kayhan Kalhor - Mohammad Reza Shajarian: Zemestan ast (“It’s Winter”), 3rd and 4rd movements (15'39")From the Californian concert recording of 2001 of the three great performers of classical Persian music. The poem of the great modern Persian author Mehdi Akhavan Sales (1928-1991) giving the title to this CD is sung by Shajarian. You can listen to the rest of the CD here or also here, where the texts too are published in Persian. (I will translate them in a next post.) Another version of the introducing tune played by Alizadeh and Kalhor can be heard here in the performance of two other great masters, Parviz Meshkatian and Shahram Nazeri.

Bach, Gavotte I and II from the 3rd English Suite, played by András Schiff (3'21")One of the several performances of these two Gavottes with which I have counterpointed the Rumi-CD by Davood Azad. It is worth to listen the other versions as well.

Le Vieux Gaultier: La Poste (the last movement of Suite in d minor) - Hopkinson Smith, lute (1'30")Hopkinson Smith is one of the greatest living musicians. On this CD he plays the lute suites of the 16th-century Ennemond Gaultier. You can find his full discography here.

Hossein Alizadeh: Mahtâb / Esfahân (16'26")Hossein Alizadeh is one of the best classical Persian musicians, playing on various Iranian lutes. In Iran his manuals are used in the teaching of saz and tar. On this CD he improvises in four classical Persian modes on the lute called sallâneh, designed by himself.